Aer Lingus - 5

[840]

Paris would be out from Shannon as between Ryanair and Air France, it's a saturated route.

Amsterdam would be totally dependent on a KLM code share. I still haven't worked out why this never happened for Belfast.

The other problem with Amsterdam is that it would require basing an aircraft there or doing a W pattern. The first would mean you'd need to find a batch of other routes; the second would mean flight times that weren't ideal for intercontinental connections in Amsterdam.

[BFS101]

Belfast was a doomed idea from the start.

I really can't get my head around these comments. Okay, I'm a little biased for Belfast airports, and sure enough on the thinner routes up against EZY, EI didn't do too well. But had any airline offered NCE, GVA, AMS etc when Easyjet were offering daily flights and established on the routes, probably ended up with the same EI result. EZY are established at BFS, NI people seem to like them, they generally offer reasonable prices. On thinner routes any airline will find it hard to compete.

So BFS are loosing an aircarft, like I said if this helps the base and gets rid of dead wood dragging EI down, then its for the best. BFS loads now at 81%, forward bookings looking "healthy", and the base to break even this year.

So if EI are getting bums on seats, and not making a loss (at BFS), where is the huge failure???

So where is all the negitive information coming from??? How are we all aware BFS is such a failure. All the releases coming from EI appear positive, okay not surprising, but the figures and breaking even seem to suggest something is going well for them. The only negitive comments about EI at Aldergrove seem to be on this forum.

Are these people jealous that BFS got the base, bitter that SNN got kicked to the curb, or genuinely do you have accurate insider information???

[brian_dromey]

I think BFS ruffled a lot of feathers. The "Mayor of Clare" and the "people of the whest" stirred up massive media noise, fanned the flames which nearly brought the airline to all-out strike and tarnished the EI brand, alienated customers and investors. Even the goverment of out little Banana republic got their knickers in a twist over a few LHR slots. It was handled appallingly by the EI team. How DM (and the rest of the mopes at EI HQ) remained credible over that period is beyond me.

Personally, I think BFS was a good move and while the LHR route was controversial it was crucial that EI had a few core routes which were attractive to the business community, such as LHR. I think EI mis-interpreted the NI market though. The initial schedule was almost identical to ORK, I think tastes are a little different up north, perhaps slightly closer to the UK than the Republic.

Brian.

[tigger2k8]

agreed with BFS101

EI estimated to carry 500,000 in their first year, yet they carried 750,000... explain to me how thats a failure? i think its sometime this month or next they will have reached 1,000,000 passengers.... again, explain how thats a failure...

EI can compete with EZY on the same routes at BFS, BUT only during Summer and December, any other time theres simply not enough people in N.I travelling for their to be 14 flights a week to CDG (as there was in winter 08 if i remember correctly..)

are some of these negative comments coming from people who dont want to see EI operating bases in the UK? as all the doom and gloom posts always focus on BFS and LGW..

[Skipness One Echo]

Lower the airline staff costs

You mean
a) enforce staff cuts on loyal staff
b) outsource their jobs to a cheap handler
c) sack a lot of them

It's NOT that easy to do. Ask Willy Walsh.

[Shamrock350]

just a quick last note on the closure of the LHR-SNN route... (i'll keep this one short)

There was such hype over it closing barely anyone said anything when it re-started.

A total waste of a marketing opportunity. Where were the cheers, fanfares and ladies dancing around topless in celebration of the return of the coveted heathrow connection???!!

(and no, this isn't exaggeration... gatwick got a hundred nudists!)

There are adverts in London for Shannon. They currently have two campaigns running, one for Irish routes and one for the Gatwick base. The print adverts for Irish routes often feature "The Wonderful West" and display their fares to Shannon. In Ireland there are billboards and newspaper adverts for the Heathrow route and there are posters in Shannon Airport for Heathrow so they've done a pretty standard advertising campaign for the return on the route.

The hype over closing the route was created by locals, the mayor and local business. The were constant claims that tourism would collapse, calls for Aer Lingus to restore the route and even threats to boycott the airline altogether and not to mention the odd protest or two. Now the route has been restored there seems to be nothing. Aer Lingus have promoted it like any other route which I think is perfectly acceptable but most of the people that originally complained seem very quiet, either they don't know or didn't actually care that much in the first place and just jumped on the band wagon.

Gatwick got a big fanfare because it needed one, if it works out Gatwick will be hugely important to Aer Lingus in the future whereas Shannon-Heathrow really is just another route.

[CabinCrewe]

You mean
a) enforce staff cuts on loyal staff
b) outsource their jobs to a cheap handler
c) sack a lot of them

It must be hard being so down and negative with every post...

[anto nov]

I think that the people of the mid west had moved on from the pull out of the LHR slots when then they decided to come back. City jet had entered and FR had expanded and even though the return was welcome I think the mood was one of suspicion and mistrust as opposed to fanfare. My point is simple..it was a bad business move to pull the profitable routes in the first place. Sure SNN needed cleaning up but they have managed a cost saving plan since without slashing routes.

[Skipness One Echo]

Quote:
You mean
a) enforce staff cuts on loyal staff
b) outsource their jobs to a cheap handler
c) sack a lot of them

It must be hard being so down and negative with every post...

I'm a realist and I work in business. Some of the claptrap posted on pprune is from another planet. The options I gave are the options on the table. Did I miss a realistic other option?

[racedo]

Aer Lingus new routes apparently with Vilnius route cancelled already.

Looked at the Ord - BCN route and its a stopover in Dublin, arrive at 08.30 and then hang around until 18.10 and seems to be that way with them all.

Restarted:Chicago, O'Hare International (ORD) to Frankfurt, International (Rhein-Main) (FRA)
New:Brussels, (BRU) to Dulles, Washington Dulles Intl (IAD)
New:Faro (FAO) to Boston, Logan International (BOS)
New:New York, John F Kennedy Intl (JFK) to Vienna, Schwechat International (VIE)
New:Chicago, O'Hare International (ORD) to Barcelona, El Prat De Llobregat (BCN)
New:Chicago, O'Hare International (ORD) to Dusseldorf, International (Rhein-Ruhr) (DUS)
New:Chicago, O'Hare International (ORD) to Faro (FAO)
New:Chicago, O'Hare International (ORD) to Munich, Franz Josef Strauss (MUC)
Cancelled:New York, John F Kennedy Intl (JFK) to Vilnius (VNO)

[Shamrock350]

CAA Stats for April show that the new Knock route has had a 67% load factor with 5867 passengers for the first 25 days. A pretty decent performance for a new route. A few flights were sold out over Easter so that would have of course been a factor.

[colegate]

Wh EI chose to go into Belfast when that city is dominated by RYR and EZY , both of whom have far larger market presence and far lower costs is beyond me. No wonder they are getting hammered there.

It is very similar at LGW which is EZY's largest base. EZY have genuine critical mass at LON with extensice operations at LGW, LTN and STN. They claim to have 39 aircraft based at LGW and are by far the largest and msot successful short haul operation ever undertaken there. Why EI should think for one minute that they can succeed against that is beyond me.

I ahve looked at their winter offerings there (on web). Just take AGP, planned for twice daily. There is no way that they can ever operate that schedule successfully. The second rotation arrives back late at night. Last winter other airlines were cancelling even excellently timed daylight flights because of low demand. The slump in demand continues and will be thus next winter. That evening rotation will bleed the route to death for EI if it is ever operated.

Knock has been operated before and XL cancelled it long before they failed. Operational difficulties(principlaay bad weather at Knock and low demand killed it. A 67% load factor for the month containing Easter is disastrous.

EI's costs make it impossible for them to compete effectively with EZY. They must already be finding this at LGW and looking at red ink accordingly. EZY get 156 seats into an A319 and EI at LGW have 171 seats in an A320. Only 15 more seats!

I have flown on EI and RYR into/out of DUB several times in last year. I cannot think of a single area in which EI's service is superior. Despite their higher staff numbers at the gate their boarding process is far worse than RYR's and obviously more costly.

I am glad that I am not one of their beleaguered shareholders. In recent times it has been seen as aduty of Directors to generate value for shareholders. This does not seem to be happening at EI just now. Rather it is as Rod Eddington siad once when he was CX at BA. "Airlines have a history of wiping out shareholder value".

[brian_dromey]

Colgate, a few points

EI went into Belfast BEFORE FR. FR simply opened a base at City airport as a response. At BHD FR's aircraft are severely restricted in terms of seats they can fill and operational hours.

A 67% load on a daily flight, in a brand new market is pretty impressive for any airline. Airlines would crawl over broken glass for load factors like that on many of their established routes, not to mind a brand new one.

EI have 174 seats on their A320s (other than 2 DUB based machines which seat 171, these were destined for IB). Other than at ORK, DUB and SNN EI is handled by 3rd parties, just like U2 and FR. If you like the constant sell, sell sell jingles and klaxons on board FR thats absolutely fine but please don't talk out of your behind in regards to easily verifiable facts.

Methinks the orange brigade must be feeling a little threatened.....God knows they already run scared of one Irish airline......

[tigger2k8]

Wh EI chose to go into Belfast when that city is dominated by RYR and EZY , both of whom have far larger market presence and far lower costs is beyond me. No wonder they are getting hammered there.

like i said before, during summer and December its possible for EI to compete against EZY as theres enough people travelling, but once you hit November and parts of Feb and Apr, things get quiet... ON ALL AIRLINES at BFS.... in the quiet period theres simply not enough people in N.I travelling for there to be 2 airlines serving certain routes (BCN and CDG for example, MXP never really kicked off at all, as for FCO 75% of the flights had good loads)

i can tell you now, outside of the quiet periods EI does very well at BFS.... despite what some post on here , they still managed to have 160ish people on a BFS-FAO the other day, despite there being 2 other flights to FAO that day

only difference is at BFS EZY has the cash to keeps its routes in competition against EI even when loads are low, but since EI doesnt have that cash they are doing the smart thing for their business and thats dropping the routes


ill just copy and paste this into notepad for tomorrow when someone else makes a claim about BFS thats false

[The Flying Cokeman]

Brian Domey,

You're living in a dream EI can never beat EZY especially not the way they're burning cash at the moment. Experts say that unless the market starts picking up again EI will be gone by 3 to 5 years. MOL claims 2-3 years but he's always "optimistic" in a bad way

Because they have a good loadfactor or more passengers than expected don't say much as they have been giving tickets away for nothing. Adverts in the UK with £9.99 or £19.99 including taxes is not gonna make your company profitable on the contrary.

[brian_dromey]

I never said that EI would beat U2 at LGW, or indeed BFS. I corrected Colgates incorrect posting. I can understand U2's vicious protectionism of both BFS and LGW, these were areas U2 had relatively little competition and now EI seems to want to play in two crowded market places and has brought FR with them, at least to Belfast.

My final point was that U2 would be foolish to simply write off EI, who have a lot of experience dealing with FR at their largest base. As you will be well aware the advertised price is not always available and EI does well with on-board sales as well, in addition the baggage charges and excess luggage fees add to the bottom line.

As for the MOL comment, if that man were to be believed the only airline left in Europe will soon be FR. He has predicted the bankruptcy of pretty much every airline from AZ to Air Berlin. I hope BFS continues to mature for EI and that LGW does well for them.

[Husky One]

Easyjet dropped the ball in BFS and it would appear they are still winning. All this despite the very significant 'benefits' provided to EI in order to create the jobs in NI. There was always a place for EI in BFS but not as a piggy-back operation on the Easy network. I'm not sure the lesson has been learned fully yet. LGW is a different matter and you can be assured that Easy will fight viciously to defend their patch. Reference to load factors is pure nonsense if the yield is wrong and always has been. Until EI wake up to the reality that they are just another loco and start behaving as such they will be under threat.

[iwhak]

840.....My understanding as to why BFS/AMS was not a codeshare with KLM is that the KLM unions only allow two codeshares per country, and these were already allotted to DUB and ORK.

[Charlie Roy]

840.....My understanding as to why BFS/AMS was not a codeshare with KLM is that the KLM unions only allow two codeshares per country, and these were already allotted to DUB and ORK.

But Dublin and Cork are in the Republic of Ireland, and Belfast is in Northern Ireland. In the world of aviation and unions, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland are 2 different countries.

Maybe the union rule is "only 2 codeshares per airline"? Although this doesn't seem practical... but nor does the "per country" rule for that matter...

[BFS101]

Why EI chose to go into Belfast when that city is dominated by RYR

Ryanair that came to Belfast AFTER Aer Lingus???
FR are currently only domestic from Belfast with all flights within the United Kindom, EI on the other hand, has only one domestic flight.